Catching Butterflies
by The Fritz
Summary: You can either treasure them or crush them. Ten drabbles on the Aoyagi brothers. Seimei/Ritsuka.
1. Inside Stone Walls

**Author's Notes:** Yes, more Aoyagicest, as if I don't write it enough. Blame Seimei, who apparently with me writes himself. These are done for 10 Passions on Live Journal. This is theme five, His Place.

* * *

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" Seimei asked him one day.

"Huh?" Ritsuka blinked slowly before mulling over the question. He hadn't thought about it, really. And secretly, being an adult sounded far away and scary. "I... don't know."

"Surely there's _something_," Seimei pressed, but his tone was gentle. "Every boy your age has dreams."

"They do?"

"Yes. Most want to be someone very important, like a policeman, a knight, or even a king."

"But I wouldn't make a good king," Ritsuka replied, shaking his head. "Nope."

"I think you would. In fact, I'm sure of it." That strange smile that Seimei wore when he thought no one was looking crept onto his face, and Ritsuka gulped for a reason he couldn't name. "And I could be your castle."

"Okay," he agreed. Seimei would make a nice castle - he was strong and beautiful and perfect.

"Good." His big brother seemed happy about that, so Ritsuka smiled, pleased that he could be the cause. But suddenly it changed as Seimei stared at him intently with _that_ expression (_why am I nervous?_) and added, "You know, bad things happen when a king leaves his castle. You have to promise to stay with me forever."

Ritsuka laughed then, half out of relief. Seimei said the weirdest things sometimes.

"I won't leave. I promise."

It wasn't like there was any other place he wanted to be.


	2. Rain of Ashes

**Author's Notes: **Theme ten, The Road Back To You. I have a love/hate relationship with this, honestly. -.- For greater understanding, knowledge of the July Zero Sum chapter is best.

* * *

_There are only two._

It's amazing, he thinks; the world is so big, and yet there are only two people who live on it. Two truly beautiful things, and the entire world, just for them. They could have pets, too - the only-pretty-on-the-outside animals that are so different from them. It's a fantasy - no, a reality - that only he can make come true. He is the only one who knows.

_i lovehatelovelovelove you oh yes i do_

Nothing else matters. Nothing else could get in the way, and if it did, he has never minded cleaning up filth when necessary.

_i can't see anyone but you it's always YOU_

He knows that it's mutual. _He_ can't see anyone but him. He's made sure of that, through soft spoken (_empty_) words and a shield from the knife that repeatedly drives home _his_ own self-hatred. It's such an easy thing to do; the little one does not realize how precious he is, how fragile and perfect. (_What would it be like to destroy it?_)

There is doubt, though, a doubt that he has deeply hidden to the point of almost oblivion. It occasionally breaks free in wild, paranoid thoughts, _he could leave, something could take him away_.

A way exists, to get rid of that doubt. To effectively chain them together forever (_he_ won't be able to think about anything else). An ultimate expression of the force that could never be put into something as simple and crude as words.

_there are only two me and you_

Seimei's love letter is a corpse not his own and a lifetime of lies.


	3. Secret Encounter

**Author's Notes:** Theme one, Secret Encounter.

* * *

They often took baths together, even after Ritsuka had long passed what was likely the appropriate age for such activities. Seimei knew that it was calming for Ritsuka, a time when he could be vulnerable yet still feel safe and secure, and Seimei wasn't about to pretend that he didn't enjoy it himself. They stayed in there for hours at a time, childishly splashing and living in a world where nothing mattered because there was no one else but the two of them.

Ritsuka always had to be dried after they finished. If Seimei left him to his own devices, he often forgot or was too tired to bother. More than once the boy had plopped like a zombie into the bed they always shared, his pajamas soaked through and clinging defiantly to his small frame.

Though it wasn't as if Seimei was at all adverse to drying him. He loved it like almost nothing else, the fresh cloth sliding over equally soft skin and hair, the sound of Ritsuka's dazed giggles as his older brother tickled his twitching ears. A sleepy Ritsuka was also less likely to notice much of anything, so Seimei could let his touches linger far longer than what was necessary. The fabric of the towel became a strict and mocking barrier between perfection defined and the ministrations of bony fingers that were only chaste in a physical sense.

Sometimes the towel slipped, but that was alright. Accidents were bound to happen.


	4. Blood and Rust

**Author's Notes:** Theme Four, Hidden From the World. Also another present for dearest Kei.

* * *

There's blood all over him, and his ears twitch with that realization. He tries to avoid it and yet it always happens, and he can't tell if it belongs to him or that fighter and sacrifice pair they just killed. They shouldn't mingle together, and yet somehow it doesn't matter, because it needs to be off of his hands and clothes and out of his hair and he just needs to be _clean_. It's worse under the fingernails, where it cakes like some kind of rust that smells of life and death and the foul aspects of both.

Evidence of his own mortality has always disturbed him, and it should be washed away before Ritsuka sees.


End file.
